CHAPTER
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Discipline and Employee
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Overview
•Essentials of Discipline
•Approaches to Discipline
•Administering Discipline
•Termination
•Employee Assistance Programs
•Employee Safety
•Harassment
•The Leaders Key Role
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Discipline and Employee
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Essentials of Discipline
Discipline:
1. Condition or state of orderly conduct & compliance with
rules, regulations and procedures.
2. Action to ensure orderly conduct & compliance to the rules.
Both sides are the responsibility of the manager.
Discipline is essential to managerial success.
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Discipline and Employee
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Steps in the Discipline Process
1. Establish & communicate ground rules for performance
& conduct.
2. Evaluate employee performance & conduct.
3. Reinforce employees for appropriate performance &
conduct, work with them to improve when necessary.
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Discipline and Employee
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Essentials to Successful Discipline
1. A set of rules that everyone knows & understands.
2. A clear statement of the consequences of failing to
observe the rules.
3. Prompt, consistent, impersonal enforcement of the
rules.
4. Appropriate recognition & reinforcement of
employees’ positive actions.
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Discipline and Employee
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Figure 12.2
A framework of policies, rules, restrictions, etc.
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Discipline and Employee
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Negative Approaches to Discipline
Negative discipline:
•Maintaining discipline through fear & punishment, with
progressively severe penalties for rule violations.
•Negative discipline has never been successful at turning
chronic rule breakers into cooperative employees.
•Fear-and-Punishment are de-motivators.
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Discipline and Employee
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Negative Discipline
In a fear-and-punishment approach to discipline, there is
traditional four-stage formula for disciplinary action:
1.Oral warning
2.Written Warning
3.Punishment (suspension)
4.Termination
This four-stage formula is called progressive discipline.
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Discipline and Employee
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CHAPTER
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Positive Discipline
•Positive Discipline:
•When rules are broken you inform & correct.
•Extension of coaching.
•Theory Y view of people.
•Positive discipline works!
•Shifting from negative to positive discipline is easier said
then done.
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Positive Discipline
For chronic rule breakers, there is a three-stage formula
for disciplinary action:
•Stage 1: Oral Reminder
•Stage 2: Written Reminder
•Stage 3: Termination
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Discipline and Employee
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Figure 12.4
Negative and positive disciplinary action compared.
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Discipline and Employee
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Advantages of the Positive Approach
•Keeps discipline problems from developing.
•Improves relations between boss & workers.
•Fosters early & consistent rule enforcement.
•Lower costs: less turnover, fewer problems, better work,
no chronic discipline problems.
•Avoids grievances in union settings.
•Turns some offenders around.
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Discipline and Employee
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Shifting to the Positive Approach
•Supervisors who are used to administering penalties &
punishments often have trouble shifting to the positive approach.
•They may have difficulty:
•Accepting the idea of paying an employee to stay home & think
things over.
•Shaking loose the habit of thinking in terms of punishment &
substituting the attitude of educating & helping people to avoid
breaking rules.
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Discipline and Employee
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Administering Discipline
Uniform discipline system:
•Prescribes the specific action for each rule violation.
•You must be able to adapt your own leadership style to, your
workers, their needs, their actions, & the circumstances.
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Discipline and Employee
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Mistakes to Avoid
•Starting off easy.
•Neglecting to take action or too slow of a response.
•Acting in anger.
•Threatening action & not carrying it out.
•Criticizing in front of others.
•Exceeding authority.
•Shifting responsibility for discipline.
•Unexpectedly enforcing commonly violated rules.
•Criticizing person instead of behavior.
•Touching someone when you are disciplining.
•Being inconsistent.
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Discipline and Employee
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Taking the Essentials Steps
Step 1: Collect all the facts.
Step 2: Discuss the incident with the employee.
Step 3: Decide on appropriate action (if any).
Step 4: Take the appropriate actions & develop an improvement
plan with the employee.
Step 5: Make sure everything is documented.
Step 6: Follow up.
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Discipline and Employee
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CHAPTER
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Termination: Salvage or Terminate
•The Dehire:
•Trying to make the employee want to resign.
•Not recommended.
•Destructive way of handling a person.
•Legally it opens various discrimination lawsuits.
•From the productivity point of view & your own
frustration level, it would be better to simply terminate.
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Factors to be Considered
•Length of service.
•Past record.
•Need for worker’s skills, worker’s need for job.
•Possibility of trouble making over firing.
•Effect of firing on others.
•Cost of keeping vs. cost of terminating.
•Your authority.
•Salvage options.
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Discipline and Employee
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Just Cause Termination
•Employee is terminated because the offense affected
specific work he did or the operation as a whole in
detrimental ways.
•Some questions to ask:
• Did the employee know the rule?
• Were expectations reasonable?
• Did management make a reasonable effort to help?
•For more see questions to ask when considering a just
cause termination.
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Discipline and Employee
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Figure 12.6
Inappropriate reasons for terminating an employee.
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Discipline and Employee
Assistance Programs
The Termination Interview Checklist
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Select a good time & place to conduct the interview.
Determine who will be present.
Develop your opening statement.
Determine how best to respond to possible reactions.
Determine final pay.
Develop a list of clearance procedures to be performed
at the end of the interview.
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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Discipline and Employee
Assistance Programs
Steps for the Termination Interview
Avoid small talk, tell the employee that they are being
dismissed & why in a firm calm manner.
Listen to & accept responses of the employee.
Say something positive to them.
Move on to discuss final pay, benefits, etc.
Explain clearance procedures.
End the interview by standing up & moving towards
the door.
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Discipline and Employee
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Employee Assistance Programs
•Counseling programs.
•An expansion of traditional occupational alcoholism
programs.
•Employer paid benefit program to assist employees with
personal problems.
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Employee Assistance Programs
EAPs handle a wide range of problems:
•Emotional
•Family
•Marital
•Mental Health
•Stress
•Financial
•Substance abuse
•Legal
•Workplace
•Elder Care
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Discipline and Employee
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Employee Assistance Programs
•Signs of employees in need of help are increased tardiness, fatigue,
missed goals, inappropriate behavior, medical problems,
psychological problems, stress, & increased sick days.
•The approach to take is called intervention rather than
confrontation
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Discipline and Employee
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Employee Safety
•The National Safety Council has reported that every
workday a fatality happens every two hours and a
debilitating accident occurs every two seconds.
•Here are the most common causes of workplace
accidents:
•Slips and trips
•Improper handling (lifting, lowering, pulling, etc.)
•Traffic accidents (being hit by a moving vehicle)
•Electrical accidents/burns
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Discipline and Employee
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Harrassment
•Subjecting another person to intimidating, hostile, or
offensive behavior.
•The standard of liability set forth in these decisions is
premised on two principles:
1. an employer is responsible for the acts of its supervisors.
2. employers should be encouraged to prevent harassment and
employees should be encouraged to avoid or limit the harm
from harassment
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Discipline and Employee
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Harrassment
The employer may be able to avoid liability or limit damages by
establishing an affirmative defense that includes two necessary
elements:
1. The employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and
correct promptly any harassing behavior.
2. The employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any
preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the
employer or to avoid harm otherwise.
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Discipline and Employee
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Sexual Harrassment
Under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, sexual
harassment consists of “unwelcome advances, requests
for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a
sexual nature when:
1. submission to such conduct is made, either explicitly or
implicitly, a term or condition of an individual’s employment.
2. submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is
used as the basis for employment decisions affecting the
person.”
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Discipline and Employee
Assistance Programs
The Leader’s Key Role
•Effective leaders establish framework of orderly discipline
& act promptly to correct mistakes & solve problems.
•Threat & punishment leaders are usually plagued with
chronic discipline problems.
•The leader creates the prevailing condition of discipline.
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